Lisle candidate assailed for 'anti-Navistar' stance

A day after the Daily Herald endorsed Richard Wilkie for the Lisle village board, a movement opposing Wilkie's candidacy popped up on a blog and manifested itself in a wave of correspondence to the newspaper.

Most of the dozens of e-mails were the same form letter, right down to the misspelling of the candidate's name. It begins: “I read the Daily Herald editorial board's endorsements for Lisle Village Trustee and thought your endorsement of Richard Wilke was incorrect. Wilke has a track record for accepting the status quo for the Village of Lisle. He has spent countless hours fighting economic development for the village.”

Wilkie's crime?

He strongly opposed Navistar's now-scrapped plan to locate a diesel engine testing facility at its future headquarters in Lisle. For that, the 56-year-old Lisle resident is being painted as anti-business, anti-growth and anti-economic development.

“They might as well have said that I am against small children and puppies,” Wilkie said Wednesday. “None of it makes sense — and none of it is substantiated. This is an attack to make me look like something I'm not.”

Members of the group that runs the blog — Jobs for Lisle — say they were surprised to learn that the Daily Herald endorsed Wilkie along with incumbents Ed Young and Mark Boyle. The other candidates vying for three seats on the village board are incumbent Cathy Cawiezel and Gary Ledvora, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor two years ago. The form letter has been removed from the site.

Ray Kinney, one of the people who organized the “call for action,” said the Jobs for Lisle group was trying to spread the word that Wilkie is someone whose ”message has always been ‘no' to business.”

“When a candidate is trying to get your endorsement, they are going to tell you what you want to hear,” said Kinney, who owns businesses in Lisle and Naperville.

“Maybe he (Wilkie) was able to sell you that he is a pro-business guy,” Kinney said. “But we feel that he was very anti-Navistar and very anti-development.”

Wilkie says that is simply untrue, adding that he believes Navistar's move to the village “is the best thing to happen to Lisle in the last 20 years.”

Wilkie said he is convinced the person behind the Web campaign against him is Dennis Culloton, who owns Culloton Strategies, a media communications strategy firm based in Chicago and Naperville. Culloton, who is representing Navistar in its expansion, registered the Jobs for Lisle website last year and is listed as its administrative contact.

While he set up the site, Culloton said he no longer has control of it. He added that he didn't write the form letter and isn't involved in Lisle's village board race.

“I am not working for any Lisle candidates,” Culloton said. “He (Wilkie) is just wrong on the facts again.”

Trustees Young and Boyle said Wednesday that Culloton isn't helping their campaigns.

Still, Wilkie isn't buying it. He is asking Culloton's latest client — the DuPage County Board — to intervene and “let Mr. Culloton know that this conduct is not acceptable while he is on the county payroll.” Several weeks ago, Culloton Strategies was awarded a three-month contract by the county totaling more than $14,000.

“Culloton's name is on the website,” Wilkie said. “He's the owner of it. He's responsible for its content.”

In fact, the only point Wilkie and Culloton agree on is that Navistar officials have nothing to do with the political dispute.

“They do not want to be involved in Lisle's politics,” said Wilkie, who added he spoke Tuesday with Don Sharp, Navistar's vice president and chief information officer. “Don said they are moving forward. They don't want to move backward. I completely agree with him.”